6 ms·

I don't get the point. If science does care about the JOURNAL impact factors too much, why then, as a consequence, would everyone publish in low impact factor

I don't get the point. If science does care about the JOURNAL impact factors too much, why then, as a consequence, would everyone publish in low impact factor journals?

aluren 7y ago
Low-IF journals are easier to publish to by definition. You first try to publish in a high-IF journal, if they reject you then you try one with lower IF, and so on. I'm all about not taking IF as face value and don't need a n-th reminder about the metric's issues seeing how rehashing them is something of a favorite pastime among scientists, but in this specific case other more qualitative assessments don't line up either: -Journal is completely obscure to the genomics community -No causal genetic mechanism is shown, everything is shoved into a "heritability" black box that some people seem to think is like your video game character starting stats or something -Authors don't have a genetics background -It's not my field, but there appears to be a wealth of literature on how fertility rates decrease in history, none of them involving "heritability" and little is done to address, reconcile or unify that -There does seem to be darker political overtones that are exacerbated by commenters, leading me to think the arguments are not being made in good faith Journal IF is just a (flawed) heuristic but in this case it sets a low prior and the "updates" didn't help
- xamuel 7y ago
  >There does seem to be darker political overtones that are exacerbated by commenters Are we reading the same comments section? Which specific comments are you talking about? The comments section I read seemed quite apolitical, except for this particular sub-thread. >Low-IF journals are easier to publish to by definition. It might be true that Low-IF journals in general are easier to publish to, but that's not true "by definition". By definition, Low-IF journals are journals whose papers are less-cited (this is an oversimplification, of course). For example, IF tends to vary a lot by field, so in your comment where you casually dismissed anything with IF<4 as a joke, you inadvertently dismissed whole entire fields. For example, one of the absolute top math journals, the "Annals of Mathematics", has an IF of 3.027. I can assure you, it's much harder to publish in the Annals of Mathematics than in a typical genetics journal with an IF of >=4.
  - j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
    >> There does seem to be darker political overtones that are exacerbated by commenters > Are we reading the same comments section? Which specific comments are you talking about? The comments section I read seemed quite apolitical, except for this particular sub-thread. Please. >> Low-IF journals are easier to publish to by definition. > (...) By definition, Low-IF journals are journals whose papers are less-cited (this is an oversimplification, of course). For example, IF tends to vary a lot by field, so in your comment where you casually dismissed anything with IF<4 as a joke, you inadvertently dismissed whole entire fields. (...) Accepted. So in this specific case, do we talk about a journal in a field where an IF of 4 is low or high?
    - xamuel 7y ago
      >Please. No, you please. I'm genuinely trying to reach a better understanding of your side. What comment did you think was the most political, outside of this sub-thread? Was it the one by car12 [1] which pointed out a quantitative observation about Muslim fertility rates and imagined a future where Islamic parties gain a bigger voice in politics through demographics? If so, what is it about that that's so political? Or if not that, then can you point to another comment that you think was particularly political? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20361236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20361236
      - j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
        Thank you, really good example for that. This is also a good one: > If an antibiotic doesn't wipe out its target, then its target's numbers will be devastated in the short-term, but in the long-term, its target will evolve immunity to the antibiotic and ultimately recover. > If you think about it, contraceptives are extremely similar to an antibiotic whose target is human beings. We're still living in the short-term when the antibiotic seems to be effective. Without any further detail or reasoning, just by "thinking about it" (whatever the author meant by that, he did not elaborate), the author draws a pretty extreme conclusion. This seems to be a rather unscientific, political attempt to reply to the original question: > If this is true, then how do they explain population stabilization in, e.g., Europe, and other developed areas? Why shouldn't what worked for Europe work for the rest of the world?
- DissidentSci 7y ago
  Please explain why estimates of the twin & SNP heritability of age at first birth are wrong
  - j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
    I don't really understand how that is relevant for the discussion in this thread.
    - DissidentSci 7y ago
      If anyone thinks the paper is wrong, they are stating that the measures of those values are wrong. The rest is inevitable.
      - j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
        I do not really understand what you mean with "The rest is inevitable", for example I do not know what exactly you mean with "the rest".
        DissidentSci 7y ago
        If you accept the heritability for age at first birth has not been measured wrong, then the hypothesis put forth by this paper will come about. Perhaps I over stated the case by saying inevitable. It's quite feasible that the consequences of highly fertile people overbreeding will be a reduction in civilizational complexity, which will lowerthe total population.
        j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
        > If anyone thinks the paper is wrong, they are stating that the measures of those values are wrong. The rest is inevitable. > If you accept the heritability for age at first birth has not been measured wrong, then the hypothesis put forth by this paper will come about. First you argue that if the paper is right, the measurements must be right. Then you argue that if the measurements are right, the paper must be right. Both arguments seem illogical, especially when used in that combination.

I don't get the point. If science does care about the JOURNAL impact factors too much, why then, as a consequence, would everyone publish in low impact factor journals?

aluren 7y ago

Low-IF journals are easier to publish to by definition. You first try to publish in a high-IF journal, if they reject you then you try one with lower IF, and so on. I'm all about not taking IF as face value and don't need a n-th reminder about the metric's issues seeing how rehashing them is something of a favorite pastime among scientists, but in this specific case other more qualitative assessments don't line up either: -Journal is completely obscure to the genomics community -No causal genetic mechanism is shown, everything is shoved into a "heritability" black box that some people seem to think is like your video game character starting stats or something -Authors don't have a genetics background -It's not my field, but there appears to be a wealth of literature on how fertility rates decrease in history, none of them involving "heritability" and little is done to address, reconcile or unify that -There does seem to be darker political overtones that are exacerbated by commenters, leading me to think the arguments are not being made in good faith Journal IF is just a (flawed) heuristic but in this case it sets a low prior and the "updates" didn't help

xamuel 7y ago
>There does seem to be darker political overtones that are exacerbated by commenters Are we reading the same comments section? Which specific comments are you talking about? The comments section I read seemed quite apolitical, except for this particular sub-thread. >Low-IF journals are easier to publish to by definition. It might be true that Low-IF journals in general are easier to publish to, but that's not true "by definition". By definition, Low-IF journals are journals whose papers are less-cited (this is an oversimplification, of course). For example, IF tends to vary a lot by field, so in your comment where you casually dismissed anything with IF<4 as a joke, you inadvertently dismissed whole entire fields. For example, one of the absolute top math journals, the "Annals of Mathematics", has an IF of 3.027. I can assure you, it's much harder to publish in the Annals of Mathematics than in a typical genetics journal with an IF of >=4.
- j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
  >> There does seem to be darker political overtones that are exacerbated by commenters > Are we reading the same comments section? Which specific comments are you talking about? The comments section I read seemed quite apolitical, except for this particular sub-thread. Please. >> Low-IF journals are easier to publish to by definition. > (...) By definition, Low-IF journals are journals whose papers are less-cited (this is an oversimplification, of course). For example, IF tends to vary a lot by field, so in your comment where you casually dismissed anything with IF<4 as a joke, you inadvertently dismissed whole entire fields. (...) Accepted. So in this specific case, do we talk about a journal in a field where an IF of 4 is low or high?
  - xamuel 7y ago
    >Please. No, you please. I'm genuinely trying to reach a better understanding of your side. What comment did you think was the most political, outside of this sub-thread? Was it the one by car12 [1] which pointed out a quantitative observation about Muslim fertility rates and imagined a future where Islamic parties gain a bigger voice in politics through demographics? If so, what is it about that that's so political? Or if not that, then can you point to another comment that you think was particularly political? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20361236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20361236
    - j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
      Thank you, really good example for that. This is also a good one: > If an antibiotic doesn't wipe out its target, then its target's numbers will be devastated in the short-term, but in the long-term, its target will evolve immunity to the antibiotic and ultimately recover. > If you think about it, contraceptives are extremely similar to an antibiotic whose target is human beings. We're still living in the short-term when the antibiotic seems to be effective. Without any further detail or reasoning, just by "thinking about it" (whatever the author meant by that, he did not elaborate), the author draws a pretty extreme conclusion. This seems to be a rather unscientific, political attempt to reply to the original question: > If this is true, then how do they explain population stabilization in, e.g., Europe, and other developed areas? Why shouldn't what worked for Europe work for the rest of the world?
DissidentSci 7y ago
Please explain why estimates of the twin & SNP heritability of age at first birth are wrong
- j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
  I don't really understand how that is relevant for the discussion in this thread.
  - DissidentSci 7y ago
    If anyone thinks the paper is wrong, they are stating that the measures of those values are wrong. The rest is inevitable.
    - j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
      I do not really understand what you mean with "The rest is inevitable", for example I do not know what exactly you mean with "the rest".
      - DissidentSci 7y ago
        If you accept the heritability for age at first birth has not been measured wrong, then the hypothesis put forth by this paper will come about. Perhaps I over stated the case by saying inevitable. It's quite feasible that the consequences of highly fertile people overbreeding will be a reduction in civilizational complexity, which will lowerthe total population.
        j_wtf_all_taken 7y ago
        > If anyone thinks the paper is wrong, they are stating that the measures of those values are wrong. The rest is inevitable. > If you accept the heritability for age at first birth has not been measured wrong, then the hypothesis put forth by this paper will come about. First you argue that if the paper is right, the measurements must be right. Then you argue that if the measurements are right, the paper must be right. Both arguments seem illogical, especially when used in that combination.